The spills and thrills continue.

Last evening after we arrived back at the hostel, several of us girls were in the room doing a variety of things when Martin entered the room. I happened to be sitting on my bunk, which was the bottom bunk. I glanced up as he walked past me and spotted what looked like mud on his arm and the seat of his pants looked like they were wet.

"Martin, what did you do?" I asked.

"I fell," he admitted, which caused an onslaught of laughter from us girls. His fall has completed the circle--we've all had a mishap of some sort. Poor Martin had gone out to the back garden gate to scope out the territory for this morning. Going out the back gate would be a shorter way to go, and we are all about going shorter ways.

The path was wet and covered with leaves and flower crud from trees overhead. Martin was wearing his Crocs, which proved to be a deadly combination. Even though he was walking gingerly to accomodate the wetness and path crud, his feet suddenly flew out from under him and he landed quite hard on the steps. He thought he had fallen hard enough to break an arm and a couple of ribs.

Martin washed up and didn't have any apparent injuries, but he certainly damaged his pride and has some sore spots to remind him of his unfortunate event.

In anticipation of our early morning departure, we all tried to pack as much as possible. Martin was standing out on the porch in front of our room when someone from reception came by and taped a sign to the front of it. It said that there would be a party in the bar at 2:30 AM for the NHL playoffs. We all groaned--anticipating another night of loudness that would continue past the normal time.

As we were preparing to go to bed (around 11 to 11:30), a group of people decided that the porch in front of our room was a great place to stand and talk, because they had already been shushed once and needed to move. We lay/sat around and eavesdropped for a while, when it became apparent that someone in charge came down and told them to leave the area because they were talking right in front of our partially open window.

"Oh, I bet this is where the people with the headscarves are staying," one guy said. A girl shushed him saying that we might be inside. He responded by saying that we couldn't see thru the blinds. His companions seemed somewhat horrified and their voices faded away. We wished they would have stayed so we could hear what they had to say. It would have been so much fun to have Martin open the window, which was right above his bed, and say something to let him know that although we can't see thru closed blinds, we can hear thru open windows.

At some point early in the morning (as in 3:00 AM), some person tried to open the door to our room. It woke Martin, Sara, and me up. The others slept thru it. The person rattled the door very loudly, but thankfully we had locked it. One night with a person walking into our room was enough.

We got up early and packed up our remaining items. Jolene and Louisa both requested to be allowed to sleep until just before it was time to leave. We stopped in at the bar to check e-mail before we left. The place was deserted and had been trashed by the party the night before.

At 6:20, we headed down the garden path to the back gate, only to find that it had been locked and we would need a key to get out. Martin's fall had all been in vain. We walked to the front gate and started our long, steep trek down to the tram that would take us to the train station.

We had not gone far when there was a commotion at the front of the line. It seems that Kris somehow misstepped, lost her footing, and fell to her knees. Hysterics accompanied us down the hill and to the tram.

We boarded our train at 7:19 and left promtply, headed for Ventimiglia. The trip took us about an hour. We had what was supposed to be a 40 minute layover in Ventimiglia, so we walked inside and some of us purchased sandwiches for breakfast. Our train to Milan was at the track when we arrived on the correct platform, so we went ahead and boarded it around 8:30.

The car that contained our reserved seats was rather dark, and we soon detected that there was An Issue. Station workers and train personnel messed with the breaker box for a bit, then it appeared that they were changing the batteries for our car. Our electricity finally came on, and we left the train station about 15 minutes late.

We were scheduled to be on this particular train for about 4 hours. As the morning progressed, the car became warmer and warmer. It didn't take a genius to figure out that they hadn't managed to get the air conditioning going. The conductor messed with the breakers for a while, then came back with a co-conductor, but our car remained stifling.

Louisa finally left to find a cooler car to read in. The rest of us continued to sweat it out for quite some time before Martin finally gave up and went looking for cooler air. Kris & I even made a stab at finding cooler air in the car behind us. It was a bit cooler, but the saving grace back there was that they could open their windows a little and get air moving. The journey was quite miserable.

We arrived in Milan about 30 minutes late, but it wasn't a problem because we were sceduled to have an hour and a half layover. We walked around and found sandwiches and drinks at the train station before heading to our train.

As we were boarding, it suddenly dawned on me that I hadn't seen Sara's
Venice painting recently. I asked her where it was--thinking that possibly she had packed it inside her big pack. The look of horror told me that, in fact, she had not packed it, but had left it lying somewhere along the way. I felt rather sick as she figured out the last time she had seen it was on our very first train of the morning. We were all rather subdued as we sat in our reserved seats talking about the shoulda/coulda/woulda's.

That train lasted about an hour and we changed to two more regional trains within the last hour of our journey. We finally arrived in Interlaken around 6:30. We walked to our bed and breakfast--a five to ten minute walk--where we were greeted by Ursula.

Now Ursula is A Fine Hostess. She offered us iced tea, which almost tasted like tea from home. She gave us maps, highlighted routes and times, told us of several options during our visit, and gave us advice about getting Swiss francs. It is rather annoying to have to use a totally different currency for one country for 2.5 days. But Ursula, being A Fine Hostess and all, told us that we didn't need to bother paying for our hostel until the end of our visit at which time we could use up our remaining francs and then pay any balance left either with Euros or a credit card. We like Ursula.

After showing us to our rooms, we decided to go out and see if we could find something to eat and withdraw francs from the ATM. We needed the money so we could eat, so we went to the ATM first. We were not happy to discover that the debit cards Martin, Sara, Kris, & I have brought along would not work. However, Jolene was able to withdraw them with her account, which is at a different bank than the rest of us have with us.

So we borrowed money from Jolene and went to look for food. It was a rather traumatic experience. The exchange rate from the dollar to the franc is almost even. Ursula had warned us that price of food would probably be higher than our ideal meal would be, but I don't think we were quite prepared for what we found.

We walked to two different restaurants and looked at their menus, but they were too high priced for what it appeared we would get. So we opted to go to McDonald's, which proved to be a horror in and of itself.

The quarter pounder cost 11.30 francs--12.30 francs for the combo. The $1 cheeseburger cost 2.50 francs. We were quite astonished. We paid the price, but were not happy about it.

After eating, we walked back to our rooms and called our bank in Kentucky on Martin's Skype account about our bankcard issues. They seemed to think there was a network problem. We decided to funnel money thru Jolene's bank account and settle up when we get home.

Jolene and Martin went back out to get her daily limit of cash out of the ATM so we could get another daily limit in the morning. We all took showers in the tiny little bathroom and went to bed.